Somniloquy EP

Merge; 2001

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Some people don't get excited at the prospect of a new Pram release. They're not intrigued to discover what aspect of their comfortable childhood will be warped in the lo-fi playroom phantasmagoria that Rosie Cuckston and her chums call existence. Perhaps the subdued tack that the band has taken on Somniloquy will soothe dissenters into compliance.

Ever since 1998's North Pole Radio Station, Pram have been rounding off the angles of their early albums, Helium and Sargasso Sea. The songs the band recorded were strangely alluring carnivorous plants with brightly colored barbs. Those barbs were defenses against the world's complaisance. But as the band's melodies became more hummable, their lyrics became ever more menacing. And their new nine-track EP, Somniloquy, begins with a superb example of this tactic.

Though it relies on a low-rent Mondo Exotico melody, "Mother of Pearl" is, in fact, a dime store rendering of one of Henry Fuseli's surrealist paintings. Cuckston sings with Björk-ish glee, "Teaching snails to make pearls/ Coating with plastic an elastic world," which reminds me of the incidental nocturnal mutants that border Fuseli's gracefully ghoulish rendering of "Oberon and Titania."

"The Way of the Mongoose" is the first of three previously unreleased tracks, and harkens back to Pram's earlier tinkling on the borders of melody. Here, the band smacks away at various objects not previously recognized for their musical properties before a mariachi-like trumpet sets the party up with a solid Latin thumpathon. "Monkey Puzzle" begins as spy-flick bossanova while Cuckston incongruously sings about wanting to live in a "tropicoloured world" without "black or white interpretations." The song won't add significantly to the world's appreciation of Pram, but neither does it disgrace the noble institution of the b-side.

Before the five remixes that most punters are going to leap on, Pram deliver the tender fairy lullaby, "Clock Without Hands." With the starkest of backing, Cuckston waltzes and lops from side to side as she sings about a man who's slept for all his life, and the endless web that binds us all together. It begs the question: is Rosie a Jedi master or just a discrete bondage freak?

Like-minded infantalists Plone remix "Bewitched" from The Museum of Imaginary Animals. And though they don't enhance the song all that much, their treatment has provoked me into digging out my copy of their For Beginner Piano album, if only to persuade myself that they aren't just a tax write-off for Warp Records. "Play of the Waves," taken, again, from The Museum of Imaginary Animals, is slightly glitched and ridden low to the rocky road in the Balky Mule mix. Elsewhere, Terry:Funken's remix of North Pole Radio Station's "Omnichord" evolves from a brooding, burbling bossa nova to a clanking Heath Robinson machine of an instrumental that fellow retro-futurists Manual would sell off some of their Red Army memorabilia for.

Overrated Twisted Nerve sneaker-freak Andy Votel continues in his underwhelming streak with his lackadaisical treatment of "The Last Astronaut." Instead, Sir Real's reworking of "A Million Bubbles Burst" walks away with tonight's big cash prize. Unlike the other remixers, Sir Real meets Pram on their own territory and takes them on his own ride. In this case, what begins as "Pram visit the Klanger settlement of Oliver Postgate's vision of the Moon" is hijacked by John Bonham's planet-pounding drums. The track is outstanding and, as the title of this EP suggests, it's the track that even hitherto Pram dissenters will be talking about in their sleep.